The Unintended Consequences of Term Limits
I’ve never been a big fan of term limits. After all, isn’t that what elections are all about.
Now this article in the Washington Post today:
Jo Ann Davidson remembers feeling optimistic that term limits would land more women in Ohio’s legislature, where 32 of the 132 seats were held by women in the mid-1990s. Yet in the seven years since the law took effect, the figure has fallen to 23.
And now women elected after voters imposed eight-year term limits are surrendering seats because of the rules. Often, the posts are going to men.
“It’s been hard to keep the numbers up,” said Davidson, who was Ohio’s first female House speaker and now is co-chair of the Republican National Committee. “We pick them up by ones and twos and threes. When all of a sudden you have 40-some seats open, you don’t have as many women step up as men to replace them.”
Of women, she said: “They’re harder to recruit. They’re harder to convince to run.”
The phenomenon Davidson described holds true across the country, where term-limited legislatures with rising numbers of women are the exception. In fact, gains during the past 12 years have been slightly greater in states without term limits, according to political scientist Gary Moncrief.
“The evidence has shown that it has had absolutely no positive effect at all,” said Moncrief, a Boise State University professor who predicted 15 years ago that term limits would increase representation for women. “The logic was impeccable, the empirical evidence not at all. The problem is there aren’t as many women running as we expected.”
Also:
Term limits are in effect in 15 states, in every region of the country. Created in the belief that they would make statehouses less hidebound and more representative, the rules remain a topic of considerable controversy, much of it about what effect the turnover has on legislative effectiveness.
In six states, term limits have been repealed by the legislature or killed by the courts.
The idea behind term limits of eliminating entrenched, ineffectual politicians and replacing them with “new blood� is a good one, especially when there is a large pool of qualified replacements available (e.g. candidates for U.S. president). However, in my home state of California where state assembly office holders are limited to 3 2-year terms, it is a constant struggle to find well-qualified individuals every 6 years.
Adding to this struggle is the fact that these lower offices attract candidates with little or no political experience. Yet once these otherwise fine individuals do achieve some experience and become a real asset to their constituents, they are “termed-out�.
This just doesn’t make sense to me. If the public does want term limits, perhaps an increase in the amount of allowable terms is in order, particularly for lower offices.
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14 Responses to “The Unintended Consequences of Term Limits”
I always thought term limits had a negative goal, reducing corruption. I didn’t realize that some had hoped for a positive effect.
The goal of public service for its own sake, has somehow become less valued- which is a terrible shame. Those who enter politics (many not all) want to see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and so are not enticed into running for an office with term limits. There are some places where they do work: Virginia’s governorship- where candidates can only serve once is one example.
Term limits never made sense to me. They were pushed by the minority party which despaired of ever winning a majority without them. The obvious, and entirely predictable effect that they have had is to increase the power of the permanent, peripheral forces around governmnet (read – lobbyists) who are the only people who really understand how the system works, since there is no bar to them spending their career learning how to get what they want from a legislature.
Term limits are anti-democratic not only because they deny the voters their choice of who will represent them, but because they almost demand that the representatives of the people be inexperienced and very temporary, while the special interests are represented by experienced and knowledgable hands.
Tano,
The group the benefits the most is not lobbyist but the permanent civil servant s and the staffers. They know how the process works.
I do not see it as undemocratic because the alternative is the current U.S. Senate that is based upon seniority. That gives states that keep returning the same pork barreling politicians like Robert Byrd the most power.
Term limits is suppose to limit the growth of government because long term politicians keep proposing bigger programs and begin to see the public sector as the solution for everything.
Americans want term limits overwhelmingly. The self-institionalization we see with politicians and staffers and other parasites making a career and even a life in Washington is something that repels (real) Americans.
Americans want term limits overwhelmingly. The self-institutionalization we see with politicians and staffers and other parasites making a career and even a life in Washington is something that repels (real) Americans.
Get Joe to run!
People who want term limits are clueless IMO. Not only do you have the problems the article points out and that Tano so eloquently points out but in our modern society the candidate pool will always be limited. How many careers are there where it is a good thing to leave it for whatever length of time you could serve in a given office? Darn few of them. Somehow this mythos of huge numbers of common people who could take up the challenge of running for office to give politics the “common touch” worked its way into our political culture, presumably because of our past. Well, the past is the past and in some ways has no relation to our present and what works and what doesn’t work. Term limits are over-rated and I think it will only get worse.
Why not let the public decide on the issue?
For me there’s pros and cons for each position- among the pros- getting fresh faces who are still in touch with the real world and may have new ideas, limiting the corrupting power of longevity in office, attracting those whose motives are genuinely to provide public service rather than pad their own resumes on the way to a lobbying career.
Cons include having a limited number of candidates in the talent pool, having the confusion that comes from constant turnover, and losing experienced hands who can maneuver through our system.
Maybe there’s a happy medium- allowing govt officials to become more experienced, but not so ensconced in the system that they have an unfair advantage that challengers must overcome.
Jim,
Since women are much more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, I wonder if women are just a proxy to show that term limits hurt Democrats more than Republicans.
Since many candidates today come from the staffs of serving politicians, I wonder if term limits just limits the number of established, connect staffers who want to move up?
How depressing.
All the comments, and they make a lot of sense, indicate that the idea of public service for its own sake is dead. If you want patriotism, you have to pay for it.
If that’s true, we’re goners.
doma,
My point was not that you had to pay for someone to want to commit to public service but that you couldn’t ask them to destroy their careers for it, which is true for most careers if you just left for six years or so. In addition the average American whose living is provided by a salary from his job cannot simply leave that job in order to run for public office. It’s financially impossible for the overwhelming majority of people. That makes the pool of people who can run for office much smaller than the term limit idealists think it is.
Jim Satt-
I understand your point. But how to get around that?
The alternative seems to be long terms, pork and cozy friendhips with lobbyists for future careers. I can see already how the new Congress is being seduced by special interests.
Is there an answer?
Let anyone stay in any political office for so long as people will vote them in with the exception of the President (I don’t see any real reason to adjust the Constitution. Getting rid of them is what elections are for. The corruption issue, irregardless of term limits, can only be cleared up by developing a new and more effective system of oversight.